


Reset

by shawskankredemption



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-04-20 16:30:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14265075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shawskankredemption/pseuds/shawskankredemption
Summary: 'It is stupid to have your heart broken by one of the smartest men in the world. It is even more stupid to still be in love with him, years after the fact, even when he’s a corporate sellout and obviously paid buckets for laser eye surgery.'Before reuniting with Newt, Hermann reflects.





	Reset

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wolfhalls](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfhalls/gifts).



He was holding his cane tighter than ever.   
  
  
The words, in his head, fall in and out of line, jumbling and rearranging themselves. _How have you been? How are you? You look well._  
  
  
Hermann’s leg was starting to seize, but he could sit here chastising himself for a little while longer. God, he didn’t even know whether Newt would be there or not. They hadn’t spoken in a few weeks. Newt’s last message, burning a hole. _I’ll give you call, soon._ _It’s been too long_. But there had been no call.   
  
  
  
The last time he’d, well, properly seen him, was Berlin. Eighteen months before. Newt’s tie had been crooked, with a smudge of jam on it. He’d blown on his cup of coffee to cool it down, like a child invited to a tea party.  
‘No more rocket fuel, I see,’ Hermann remembered asking. He could remember the clutter of empty energy drink cans across Newt’s desk. They gathered together, skeletons, shadows of his long nights in the lab. Hermann wasn’t sure why he remembered that.  
‘Oh, naw. Not in Europe, anyway,’ Newt had chuckled. ‘People look at you funny. It’s not cultured.’   
And then, Hermann recalled, just how he’d looked at him. Soft, warm, in a way that made his pulse thrum a little faster, tapping the inside of his wrist, maybe like it used to, when things were easier, when the clock had just been stopped.   
_‘How are you feeling?’_  
\--   
  
  
They’d kept emailing, of course. Emailed like they used to, sometimes essay length long, sometimes a couple of sentences. Newt’s academic speaking tour had sold out, Hermann had thrown himself into research, and he’d told Newton about the operation he needed, on his hip. It wouldn’t correct things but it might help with the pain, which, at the moment, was excruciating.   
_‘Do you need someone to come stay? Help look after you?’_ Newt had emailed back straight away.   
Hermann didn’t have to think about his answer. He didn’t want to think about what kind of offer that was, how unrealistic and improbable, how it would easily make things worse.   
_‘I should be fine. Thank you, Newt.’_   
  
\--   
  
It was lovely, when it had first started. _Lovely_ was perhaps a quaint way to put it. But Hermann had grown used to private sentiment over the past decade. He liked how he’d been warmed, slowly, like a wilting fern moved directly into the sunlight.   
  
A few days after the way had ended, and the clock had shut off, Hermann had gone down to the lab. He’d intended to clear away his things, start thinking about what next.  
But Newt had already been there. The music was blaring, he was shovelling paper and files around in a tornado.  
They hadn’t spoken for ten minutes.  
It’d been a few days, but things had been quieter since their drift. Silences hadn’t been filled. There had been something they’d both seen that they didn’t have the words for. ‘Hey, uhh… man,’ Newt had mumbled, and he’d turned the music down, coming over to Hermann’s desk.  
‘I just think I might’ve been like…. Jealous. Not by much. But by a bit. I was mean, sometimes. But I really loved… I enjoyed… I mean I know we’re at war, but like… sharing the lab with you…’  
Hermann had flexed his grip again. He knew, then. There was hardly anyone in the Shatterdome left. Very little chance. It was natural, it was easy. Now the war had finished and after the drift, there was nothing left.  
So he’d stood, ignored the pain that shot up his leg, tugged Newt forward by the tie and kissed him.   
Newt wasn’t surprised. He didn’t pull away. There was no point in keeping any cards off the table, Hermann thought. Newt tasted like sugar, like the packet of gummy bears he kept hidden round the lab, and his hand had moved to Hermann’s back to pull him closer, and Hermann had shifted weight, and the pain became unbearable, so much that he clutched at Newt’s forearms to keep from falling over.  
‘Well, shit.’ Newt had muttered, and helped him sit down.   
Hermann knew he wasn’t very good at kissing. There was a damn lot of things he wasn’t good at. Understanding people, for one, and knowing what they meant sometimes in conversation, when they said one thing but intended another. But with Newt, he didn’t need any of that. He’d seen himself in Newt’s mind, the curved angle of his jaw. He had felt the trip of Newt’s own heartbeat when he looked at him, the racing thoughts, how he turned away back to his work quickly. The Hermann Gottlieb Newt saw was different. He was more clever, more studious, and strangely beautiful.  
And Hermann knew what Newt had seen in his mind, too. Newt’s warmth, the way Hermann’s eyes would run over those tattoos in a reverie, the skittered pulse at his laugh. It was stupid and embarrassing to be laid so bare.   
But Newt didn’t make fun. He’d seen the worst of it, and he didn’t make fun.  
The drift had really done all the work for them.   
‘Thank god you made the move,’ Newt said, and his palm had run over Hermann’s ruined knee, his other hand reaching for his ankle to stretch it out. He knew where it hurt. He didn’t have to guess.   
‘I didn’t know how to say it.’ Hermann mumbled.   
Newt’s thumb ran over Hermann’s ankle.   
‘Do you think you can call me ‘Newt’ now?’   
  
\- - -   
  
They had three and a half years. It was kind, and it was new. They could argue until the sun came up. They travelled. Lectured. Wrote and researched together. But Newton wanted to work more, wanted to teach more, and the private sector showed great promise, while the fatigue of travel for Hermann grew too much. He wanted to slow down, especially while the world was slower too.   
But Newt was so fast and desperate for more. Hermann wanted less, but he loved him, so fiercely, that it hurt so much.  
‘You like to work more than I do,’ he murmured one day. ‘You do.’   
_‘Hermann…’_   
‘And I think you like work more than you like me.’   
Newt had sighed, rubbed the bridge of his nose. There was no point arguing.  
‘Its all right.’ Hermann said quietly, but it wasn’t.  
  
\--   
  
Six months later, Newton had been offered the speaking tour. It meant a long time on the road. Hermann wanted to stay in Europe. It was easier, that way. Less recriminations. It hurt, but Hermann understood. He felt he understood more than Newt knew.   
And then, after that time apart, Newton had taken the job at Shao Industries. He’d called him the day of.   
‘Do you want to come with me, darlin?’   
Hermann, who never thought he’d like nicknames or petnames before Newt, had called Newt the same for three years, albeit in a sterner tone.  
But Newt’s use of the name now meant only one thing.   
‘Thank you,’ Hermann replied, without having to think hard about a response, because there was no use upending everything and moving to China to have your heart stomped on again. To not exactly be neglected, but to never be number one. ‘But I don’t think that’s a good idea.’   
‘Oh,’ Newt had sounded flat. ‘Okay.’   
The issue had never been money. It tore him up, Hermann thought later, how that man had seen inside his head, but still understood so little.  
  
\- - -   
And so there they were. In two different countries, two different labs, and here Hermann was now, stupidly pining and hoping Newt had come along on the trip, trying to find the words again like an idiot, the words he hadn’t needed before. And when Hermann does see him, handsome, in his white suit and sunglasses, the warmth floods him like a burst damn, and he is suddenly beaming. It is stupid to have your heart broken by one of the smartest men in the world. It is even more stupid to still be in love with him, years after the fact, even when he’s a corporate sellout and obviously paid buckets for laser eye surgery, because he is idiotic and vain, and always has been, but once, for three lovely years, that idiotic vanity was for Hermann alone.   
And nobody can take that away, still.  
Later, in the lab, when Hermann’s just about ready to close up, his phone buzzes. Quietly. The number is unknown, but a text is there. He knows who it's from. Hermann reads it, and smiles to himself.   
  
_I’m so glad you’re still calling me Newt. Only my mother calls me doctor. x_

**Author's Note:**

> I really didn't like the movie, but the gorgeousness of seeing Newt and Hermann back onscreen was too much for me, and their scenes were lovely. It got me how much that reunion on the helipad felt like exes reuniting, so I had to write it and get this one out. Everything I write is with the support and love of Zoe, even when it's terrible. thank you angel ooxoxox


End file.
